Experimental Design Requirements

Experimental Design Requirements By Dr. Jeffrey A. Simmons, Mount St. Mary's University

The Experimental Design is written by a research team and must be shown to the Instructor at the end of the first lab session. A typed version is due one week later. It is used to assess the ability of group members to generate hypotheses and to design an experiment with proper controls and replication.

The Design must include the following sections:

 Research Question – What overall question are you attempting to answer?

 Significance – Why is the research question or this field of research important?

 Hypotheses – State the null and working hypotheses. Make sure that the hypotheses pertain to the research question.

 Methods – In as much detail as possible, describe the experimental design you are proposing. Assume the reader already knows the basic experimental set up (i.e., you will be capturing CO2 in jars of soda lime under a soil chamber) and the laboratory methods (the drying and weighing steps). At the minimum be sure to address the following questions: At what sites will you incubate the two sets of chambers? How do the two sites differ in terms of vegetation and topography? What environmental differences are you expecting? How will you select the exact placement of each chamber within a site? How many chambers will you use at each site? How long will you incubate the chambers? What precautions will you take to ensure consistency among chambers? What environmental variables will you measure (and how many times? How often? When? How? Where?)?

Your Experimental Design will be graded using a rubric that assesses four areas: Understanding of Concepts, Hypotheses, Methods, and Creativity (see rubric for details).